Does it come in a set?

Thank you for hanging in here, everyone. I am now genuinely feeling up to writing happily about knitting, and since there's been a three-week break since the last time I wrote happily about knitting, there is a lot of knitting to happily write about!

I won't try to catch up all at once, but will rather focus on the most exciting news of the day, which is that Interweave Knits has released their Holiday Gifts 2013 issue, which means that I can now talk about some of my stuff!

As part of my 12-in-12 challenge, I submitted a proposal for a mitten pattern and a scarf pattern. I had designed the mittens as the 2012 holiday gift for DD2's teacher:

(first side)

(second side)

A scarf wasn't part of the gift, but I added it into the proposal because I thought it would be nice to do a matched set. Interweave wanted it for the IK holiday issue, and asked if I could make a matching hat, too? Oh, and would it be okay if we went with a high-end yarn for the mittens and hat? Like, say, cashmere?

Well.

*Tsk*

If I must.

(Oh, how I suffer for my work.)

The "Ivy" yarn that was sent to me (from S. Charles Collezione) was 100% cashmere and...Oh. Mah. Gawrd. Mere words cannot describe how dreamy it was to work with. A tad splitty, but not to the point where it became difficult to work with. And it made glorious end products. Meet the Woodcutter Hat and Mittens:

Here's the other side of the mittens:

And here's the hat being worn by my husband:

And here's what the hat looks like at the top - I really like how the decreases come together:

For the scarf, I was sent some Poems Silk Solids, from Wisdom Yarns, and it knitted up very nicely! This is the Caldicott Scarf:

The idea for the texture patterns came from tweeds - specifically, herringbone and houndstooth. I was designing for men, so tweeds seemed a good source of inspiration.

Making a set of three things when I hadn't planned for that kind of output was a hectic experience, but I'm delighted by the end result!

And continuing on the "Oh hey, can you make a matching...?" theme, I recently submitted something which got an acceptance...along with a request for two more items in a set to match! So that should keep me busy over the next month. :)

Back to business

Okay, so now that the birthday celebrations and urge to explain one more thing about double knitting are out of the way, I'm going to return to the usual (and hopefully not desperately boring) routine of describing my knitting progress.

Short version: It's been all deadline knitting all the time over here.

Firstly, the challah cover for my friend's 10-year wedding anniversary was finished in time with not too much stress. I waffled a bit on what I would use for the embroidered (duplicate stitch) words, but eventually went with my first instinct (doubling up the project yarn), and I was absolutely thrilled with the result:

And she certainly seems to love it. :) So, yay!

So with that done, it was back to the holiday knitting.

The bad news right up front: I've made no further progress on my dad's hat, my mom's socks, my brother's hat, my husband's sweater, or my toddler's cardigan. In fact, I rather fear I've gone backwards on my brother's hat, since I tried opening up the spreadsheet with the charts on it this morning and got an error, so the charts may be gone and I might have to recreate the pattern all over again, which would suck monkey balls.

However, there is good news:

• Socks for BIL2: First sock done, second sock started!
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Mittens for our daycare provider: Charted and begun. Unfortunately, I discovered after I'd started decreasing for the top of the first mitten that it was coming out way too short. (I'm going to chalk that up to my swatch having lied to me.) So last night I re-charted, and this morning I ripped the mitten back to the top of the ribbing and re-started. I will say, though, that I am giddy with how beautifully the motifs came out, and am therefore ridiculously excited about this design. I have no idea where I'm going to submit this, but I'm confident that even if it gets rejected initially, surely someone somewhere will eventually take it, and I can't wait to share!
  
  
  
• Mittens for DD2's teacher: Done! I'm very happy with how they turned out. And moreover, I wrote up a design proposal for the pattern and sent it off. This is my first physical (non-emailed) submission ever, so it was quite a relief to get an email at the beginning of the week that it had successfully arrived before the deadline.
  
  
  
• Fingerless mitts for DD1's ballet teacher: Done! I did indeed replace the bass and treble clefs with ballet-related motifs, and I'm super-pleased at how they turned out:
  
  
  palms
  
  
  
  
  backs
  
  
  
  
  
• NEW - Lace bolero for niece: I guess I was feeling giddy from all the project finishing...or maybe it was the yarn fumes...but I decided I was doing so well that I could add another project. (Famous last words, I know.) I was also looking for an excuse to use some sock yarn I bought on sale at Lettuce Knit a few weeks ago. So I decided that my niece might like a bolero-type cardigan, did a Ravelry search for likely patterns, and settled on Shetland Shorty, from Knitty.
  
  
  It's turning out to be really quite perfect, and the pattern is easy to resize in order to a) fit my niece and b) make sure I don't run out of yarn (I have only about 85% of the yardage that the pattern requires). I'm following the XS size instructions because they're supposed to result in a 25.5" circumference, which should fit her okay now and give her room to grow, too. It's the length I really need to adjust, because the given 13.5" is more likely to result in a full-length cardigan than a bolero! However, all I have to do is decrease the number of pattern repeats up the front and the back. The pattern says to do 17, but I'm going to shave that down to about 13 - maybe even fewer. I'll hold it up to DD1 as I go, to make sure. She's slightly younger than my niece, and probably a fair bit shorter, but even so, I think she's still a pretty accurate measuring stick for torso length.
  
  
  At any rate, it looks great so far: